Acts 3:19-21 Repent you therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out… In the text we have(1) the conditions of salvation by Christ: repentance, and conversion; change of mind, and change of life; reviewing the past with true contrition, and turning to God with full purpose of amendment:(2) the immediate result, forgiveness; the cancelling of sin; the obliteration of the guilty record; the "casting all our sins into the depths of the sea"; the so passing by, the so dismissing, the sins of those who truly repent, that He remembers them no more: and(3) the future result; "that so there may come from God's presence seasons of refreshing"; that so, the number of His elect being at last accomplished, He may send Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who is now in heaven awaiting the arrival of those times of restitution, restoration, reparation of all things which have been the great subject of Divine prediction from the first. The arrival of the times thus described is made to depend upon the repentance and conversion of man. I. The period of refreshing. The word thus rendered is properly a revival by fresh air; the consequence of letting in a breeze of cool and invigorating air upon one who has been long fainting under a sultry and oppressive atmosphere. Do not we want such times? Are we not all conscious of the oppressive weight of this world's atmosphere? Do we not all feel ourselves oftentimes fainting with the closeness and sultriness of the air we are forced to breathe? The oppression of persecution is rather "a stormy wind and tempest" which has in it something of a wholesome severity, rousing our whole being into a more resolute and vigorous vitality. But the text speaks of that stifling heat which at once indisposes and incapacitates for exertion; of that sense of breathing an exhausted air, or living in a crowded cabin, which paralyses every energy, and at last forbids repose itself. How seldom does the refreshing breath of God's Holy Spirit revive Christians into the buoyancy of conscious life and health! How seldom does the sweet influence of the Divine presence lift them into that upper air where no earth-born cloud darkens their sky, and no noxious vapour damps or poisons their atmosphere! They can tell the times when this has been their bright experience. But far more often they sigh for light and air, hunger for food, thirst for water. In prosperity the air of earth is laden with a luscious perfume, lulling us into a stupor which is no repose. In adversity we seem to be confined within the walls of a sick-room,. from which worldly pleasure is banished, without the admission of a heavenly visitant. II. THE TIME OF RESTITUTION. What a tangled, disordered, inverted thing is the world as we see it! What a deterioration from any condition in which God could ever have pronounced it to be very good. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth," etc. Only see, for example, bow the relations of life are disorganised! See what misfortunes, sorrows, spring out of the affections! See the hearts of fathers turned from their children, and the hearts of children from their fathers. See the weaker and the more trusting half of mankind made the sport and the victim of the stronger and the less sensitive. See the distinction of ranks now cruelly aggravated, and now violently obliterated. And under the government of a righteous and holy God can it be conceived that this state of things should be perpetual? Is not the very extent of the ruin a prophecy of the restoration? Can it be that God should thus have made all things in vain, and suffered His own beautiful handiwork to be thus marred and desolated finally? It has been the language of all prophecy that there shall be a time of restitution. "We," the same apostle writes, "according to His promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." And shall it not be a comfort to the true Christian to look forward to the arrival of that time when the ways of God shall be finally justified to the universe? How does it become us to see that we ourselves be not adding to the confusion. Although the restoration of all things is not yet, yet let us remember that there is a restitution, a reparation, a reconstruction, which belongs to all time; a repentance and a conversion which, if not realised here, can be realised nowhere; a renewal of soul, and an amendment of life under the influence of the Holy Spirit, which is the condition of our ever being admitted into the world in which dwelleth only righteousness. If we would ever enter heaven, we must begin it here. If we would ever see the restoration of all things, we.must struggle day by day here for our own. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; |
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